Sunday, April 29, 2007

If you think IPSC belongs on a North Carolina pickup truck bumper...

You might be a redneck. Or you might have a redneck if you were taking an IPSC safety course today. I know I do.

If you just peeled off one of the blood blisters from slapping mags into your Glock and now you have a new one you might have a redneck.

Fun and educational. The fun was moving and shooting, knocking down poppers and steel plates. The education was finding out how horribly slow I draw and re-load and how utterly poorly I re-load my magazines when under the clock.

Two areas to work on that don't require actually being on a range since one can dry-practice both of them.

A VERY simplified El Presidente taught me about the slow draw and slow reload. Later on when running our little 32 round IPSC field course for the second time I found that I hadn't seated my magazine on my re-load. I found this out when the full magazine hit the ground while I was firing the round still in the chamber. Then the second full magazine also slid free of the chute as I was cycling the slide. Another was finally slapped home, slide racked and I finished the course of fire. The instructor did the course in 15 seconds. My second run was over 40. The instructor cut it to under 11 on his second run but missed one target.

Yes, my first run was under the 40 that I ran up due to re-loading errors. And it's a LOT better to find my errors in this atmosphere than if I ever need to do it in real crisis.

My shooting had acceptable accuracy, better than most of the other 5 students. I had a few misses on the steel and I had some early in the day when trying to fire 6 rounds at .25 seconds each. Distance to steel was 10 yards. I didn't hit the no-shoots.

I'm not clear to actually participate in IPSC matches and hope to be in one soon.

3 comments:

For this one I used the G 22 and the magazines were 15 rounders loaded to the top. I had just gotten the 22 back from the smith so the trigger is now as good as the one on the 23.

I'm maintaining my promise to myself to focus on "one gun" but stretching things a little by extending the definition of "one gun". The 22 and the 23 are enough alike to be almost the same. In gun handling they are the same. It's not like switching between a 1911 and Beretta.

The 22 can be my "game" gun and the 23 the friend for concealed carry.